James Hoggard, whose poetry has been praised for its
intensity and fine sense of craft, has also won awards and acclaim for
his fiction, literary translation, and personal essays. A former NEA
fellow and past president of the Texas Institute of Letters,his work
has been published throughout the U.S. as well as in Canada, India, England,
the Czech Republic, and Cuba. He is the McMurtry Distinguished Professor
of English at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas.

The Chinese built the bridge, and one
of them, legend says, is buried beneath it
He was down in a hole adjusting a form
to set a pillar in when someone tripped
a switch and a load of quick-drying cement
poured down like Gods wrath on him

Some say, however, such never happened
No one reports hearing moans near there
at night when lost ghosts cry, and no one
going through the eucalyptus forest nearby
reports seeing will-o-the-wisp flares,
the hearts of sad souls catching fire

Maybe so, that may be, the agreeable say:
Perhaps the bodys not there, never was
But it is, others insist, it is there,
and the absence of sign is proof,
for the absence of an outcry after death
is the surest sign of the fact of death.